Things probably are going to hell, and there's probably nothing we can do about it. But there's no reason not to complain anyway. My name is Marc Levy, and you can contact me at mlevy@cambridgeday.com.

Wednesday, June 09, 2004

GROVER

At the risk of just becoming a sardonic clipping service for The New York Times, I must quote a couple of paragraphs from today’s piece by Jennifer 8. Lee (what’s the 8 short for? Eighty? Eight hundred?) on efforts by acolytes of Ronald Reagan to put his image on the $10 bill -- or anything and everything else.

Grover G. Norquist, founder of the legacy project, said the group had also considered bumping Benjamin Franklin, another nonpresident, off the $100 bill, which is widely used overseas if not in the United States. “There was a discussion that it would be appropriate because it is the international currency and Ronald Reagan was the president of the whole world,” Mr. Norquist said.

But that notion was nixed, he said, “because it is also associated with the pharmaceutical industry of Colombia.”

It’s reassuring, in a “Catch-22” kind of a way, that such a scary man can also be funny and ridiculous, which is exactly what this nonsense is. Unfortunately, it won’t be funny at all when such efforts inevitably succeed.